RAIN LASHES FINAL DAY OF DUCATI XEROX TEAM TWO-DAY TEST AT EUROSPEEDWAY

Bologna (Italy), Thursday 21 July: The second and final day of the Ducati Xerox
Team’s two-day test at the Eurospeedway Lausitz in Germany was cut short this
afternoon as heavy rain lashed the circuit most of the day.

Régis Laconi and James Toseland managed to put in a full day’s dry-weather
testing on the Wednesday, but bad weather conditions meant that none of the
riders from the various WSBK teams present for the testing session could improve
their times today. Yesterday the Ducati Xerox Team focussed on learning the
track and general set-up work in the morning, before testing tyres for the
championship’s one-make supplier Pirelli in the afternoon, while today the two
riders concentrated on wet-weather tyres and set-up following a half-an-hour
dry ‘window’ first thing in the morning. The top times recorded by both riders
yesterday were 1m40.4s for Laconi, and 1m40.9s for Toseland on race tyres.

“Today it rained really a lot and the track became a bit dangerous because there
was not much grip” declared Laconi. “But we worked really well these two days,
despite the difficult conditions. Yesterday in particular I put in a lot of laps
and we fitted the large 200mm rear tyre I used during the Misano weekend, and
the results were very good.”

“The first day was a bit disappointing because we didn’t make much headway with
the new front tyre and when I did have a decent front, the day was up and I was
a bit behind with my time” commented Toseland. “Today I was the quickest before
the rain and was looking forward to improving the rest of the day, but it didn’t
happen. Then when I did get confident in the rain, I took a bit of a dive while
trying to break the two-minute barrier. It was good we did a lot of testing in
the rain because it might be like that here in September.”

This year World Superbike returns to the impressive speedway facility in the
former East Germany for the first time in three years. The 4.265 km Lausitzring
has twice been the venue for the German Round of the championship, in 2001 (when
the wins went to Colin Edwards (Honda) and Troy Bayliss (Ducati) and the
following year, when Ducati’s Australian rider scored the double. This year’s
race, round 10 in the 12-round calendar, will be held on September 11.

UNOFFICIAL TIMES:

 1. Vermeulen (Honda)        1m40.1s
 2. Laconi (Ducati Xerox)    1m40.4s
 3. Lanzi (Ducati SC)        1m40.6s
 4. Toseland (Ducati Xerox)  1m40.9s
 5. Muggeridge (Honda)       1m41.2s
 6. Walker (Kawasaki)        1m41.3s
 7. Martin (Petronas)        1m42.0s
 8. Riba (Kawasaki)          1m42.3s